Speaker 1: On this episode of This World. The lives of these
Speaker 1: men are essential to understand the American form of government
Speaker 1: and our ideals of liberty. The founding fathers all played
Speaker 1: key roles in securing American independence from Great Britain and
Speaker 1: in the creation of the government of the United States
Speaker 1: of America. And now the life of George Washington. I
Speaker 1: wanted to start the entire podcast series with George Washington
Speaker 1: because literally we all stand on his shoulders to the
Speaker 1: degree that this is a country that has a remarkable
Speaker 1: ability for freedom, that is open to everyone, and that
Speaker 1: creates a framework within which normal people can lead usual
Speaker 1: and extraordinary lives. All of that started and was based
Speaker 1: in Washington. One of the best biographies of Washington describes
Speaker 1: him as literally irreplaceable, that he is the man that
Speaker 1: was the essential person for the entire creation of America.
Speaker 1: And I think that's true. Every time clost and I
Speaker 1: go down to Mount Vernon and we look at that
Speaker 1: house he lived in with Martha and we look out
Speaker 1: on the Potomac, we realize that he had this sense.
Speaker 1: He loved being a farmer, he loved the land. He
Speaker 1: had a sense of solidness, partly because he was so
Speaker 1: big physically. I always tell people that if you played
Speaker 1: Washington in the modern era, you should be basically an
Speaker 1: nfl authensive blindman. He was physically so large for a
Speaker 1: time when the average man was about five six. He
Speaker 1: was also considered the best horseman in the colonies, which is,
Speaker 1: if you're that big physically and you're that good a horseman,
Speaker 1: he's astonishing. And Washington had this strength, both physical and moral.
Speaker 1: Part of his physical strength just came, I think biologically.
Speaker 1: He was just that big. And he worked as a farmer,
Speaker 1: he worked as a frontiersman, and he used his body
Speaker 1: his whole life. When he was serving in the legislature,
Speaker 1: people often forget this. Washington was a professional politician. He
Speaker 1: ran for office. In fact, there was a very funny story.
Speaker 1: He'd been out on the West and thought of himself
Speaker 1: as a hero and ran for office the first time.
Speaker 1: And in that era, he had a one day election campaign.
Speaker 1: Everybody gathered at the polls and the candidates bought alcohol
Speaker 1: and got free beer, free wine, free whiskey, and Washington said, no,
Speaker 1: I am a military hero. I don't need to buy
Speaker 1: anything primally, and he came in last. The following election,
Speaker 1: he bought the largest quantity of alcohol ever bought in
Speaker 1: a Virginia election, and he won. People said, I you'd
Speaker 1: be going to learn the trade here, which also fed
Speaker 1: Washington's general pattern. Many experts have studied his campaigns and said,
Speaker 1: he made many mistakes once, but you never finally making
Speaker 1: the same mistake twice. So he's down and at the
Speaker 1: House of Burgesses. And I always recommend to people to
Speaker 1: go to Williamsburg because it is such a remarkable recreation
Speaker 1: of that era. And you can go to the taverns,
Speaker 1: and Washington went to in the evenings. They didn't have TV,
Speaker 1: they didn't have computer games. So they'd sit around playing
Speaker 1: cards and drinking and talking with each other. And it
Speaker 1: was a very famous squire named Governor Bird. And Governor
Speaker 1: Bird would find some stranger and he said, I'll bet
Speaker 1: you a shilling that George Washington can break a walnut
Speaker 1: between his thumb and his first finger. Now, I urge
Speaker 1: you sometime to try this, because it takes extraordinary strength.
Speaker 1: And so he'd go over Washington be playing cards or
Speaker 1: telling stories, and he said, Colonel Washington. At this stage
Speaker 1: he had become an honorary colonel in the Virginia militia,
Speaker 1: would you mind breaking a walnut? And Washington would break
Speaker 1: the walnut. He'd collected the shilling that presumably bought Washington
Speaker 1: a drink for the favor, But it was again a
Speaker 1: sign of in an age when people value being strong physically,
Speaker 1: Washington was the strongest, but it was our show morally
Speaker 1: strong in the sense, first of all, you can get
Speaker 1: from Mount Vernon the rules he wrote at fourteen years
Speaker 1: of age, which he had copied out of several books,
Speaker 1: and which were rules for being a gentleman. And he
Speaker 1: wanted very much to have respect. He wanted what the
Speaker 1: Romans had called vertu in the sense that you are
Speaker 1: a virtuous person, not in our modern sense of sin,
Speaker 1: but in the sense that you have served the community.
Speaker 1: You are bigger the normal history. You're going to live
Speaker 1: on in history as a person who's done his job.
Speaker 1: And so Washington wanted to project this sense of authority,
Speaker 1: the sense of I am and it says, in fact,
Speaker 1: I'm noble in a in a world where her there's
Speaker 1: no nobility in the new world. At that point, it's
Speaker 1: a famous story of Washington in Philadelphia, and I think
Speaker 1: at the Constitutional Convention and Governor Morris takes a five
Speaker 1: pound bet that he can walk over and slap Washington
Speaker 1: on the shoulder, and he goes over. He gets close,
Speaker 1: he gets closer, Washington turns and looks down on him.
Speaker 1: Because Washington looks down, and everybody except Jefferson and Morris
Speaker 1: stands and looks at him and says, good evening in
Speaker 1: general Washington, he walks back over the eyes says, it's
Speaker 1: your five pounds. It is physically impossible to touch Washington
Speaker 1: because he is projects this almost force field of dignity
Speaker 1: that you can't penetrate. And he used that to enormous effect. Now, ironically,
Speaker 1: when he was a general, for example, serving the places
Speaker 1: that were pretty desperately valley forged in the winter, he
Speaker 1: would go out and throw medicine balls with the troops.
Speaker 1: He was physically very engaged. So it's not that he
Speaker 1: was incapable of being close. He loved to dance. He
Speaker 1: was capable of being close. But when he decided that
Speaker 1: he was aloof, he was a loof beyond anyone normally
Speaker 1: being able to deal with them. And that was very
Speaker 1: important that he didn't start that way, but he grew
Speaker 1: into that person. He started as a relatively poor kid,
Speaker 1: went to the Caribbean, got a slight case of smallpox,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be really valuable because it meant
Speaker 1: that he was vaccinated. He also was in a position
Speaker 1: where he watched life in the Caribbean and realized he
Speaker 1: didn't particularly like that life. Came back home. Was not
Speaker 1: wealthy personally, he's adequately, but he knew he'd have to
Speaker 1: earn a living, so became a surveyor. By the time
Speaker 1: he is nineteen years of age, he is surveying. In fact,
Speaker 1: if he had a little Washington, which is a town
Speaker 1: that has a remarkable in called the End of Washington,
Speaker 1: which is a Michelan the first place to get a
Speaker 1: Micheline star in America. Washington laid out the entire town
Speaker 1: at nineteen years of age. Now to give you a
Speaker 1: sense of how the world's different. Look at a map
Speaker 1: little Virginia and it is about seventy miles west of
Speaker 1: Washington and about fifty miles south. That was the frontier,
Speaker 1: not Kentucky, not Texas. I mean western Virginia was the frontier.
Speaker 1: And Washington spent a large part of his youth in
Speaker 1: the frontier, first as a surveyor. Where we aren't fairly
Speaker 1: good money. He also learned something people tend to forget.
Speaker 1: Surveyors can look at topography, so as when he's a
Speaker 1: general officer later he looks at a battlefield with a
Speaker 1: level of technical knowledge that no other general officer has
Speaker 1: because he knows how to he knows the distances because
Speaker 1: he's surveyed, he knows the rolling hills, he knows how
Speaker 1: to look for gullies. He knows how in an age
Speaker 1: when he didn't have helicopters, and he didn't have tanks,
Speaker 1: and he didn't have cars, even a small rise is
Speaker 1: a big deal if the other guy's got to come
Speaker 1: up in because it wears them out and slows them down.
Speaker 1: And so he's very good at looking at terrain. And
Speaker 1: he learned all this by the time he was nineteen
Speaker 1: to twenty years of age. He's given an assignment. He's
Speaker 1: very precocious. He's very close to the Fairfax family and
Speaker 1: they're among the largest landowners in the colony of Virginia.
Speaker 1: He gets an assignment to go west. This is supposed
Speaker 1: to be a peaceful assignment. The French have come down
Speaker 1: from Canada. They have occupied the place where the Ohio
Speaker 1: River is formed by two rivers coming together and where
Speaker 1: Three River Stadium is nowadays. He's given a letter to
Speaker 1: take to them that says you got to get out
Speaker 1: of here, and the French basically think you're a nice
Speaker 1: young goy. What we're not getting out of here? Washington
Speaker 1: picks a fight. He's not he was not as signed
Speaker 1: to pick a fight. He's just very pugnaciously, very young.
Speaker 1: And he then ends up at a place called Fort Necessity,
Speaker 1: where they stop and I've been out visiting Fort Necessity,
Speaker 1: which still exists as a national historical monument, and this
Speaker 1: is clearly a sign that he's not applying his survey
Speaker 1: or skills, because the fort is in the bottom of
Speaker 1: a valley where the other guys up above are shooting
Speaker 1: down at you. Furthermore, they have huge reign. The place
Speaker 1: gets totally wet, their powder gets wet. They have no
Speaker 1: choice except to surrender. Very fortunate for America he wasn't killed.
Speaker 1: I mean, at that point, the French and Indians who
Speaker 1: are their allies, are really pissed off at Washington and
Speaker 1: here's this young guy out here picking a fight. And
Speaker 1: you can literally argue that the Seven Years' War, which
Speaker 1: we call the French Indian War, the Seven Years War,
Speaker 1: which is a global war in India. He goes in Europe,
Speaker 1: it's in North America, it's in the Caribbean. It started
Speaker 1: by George Washingington who just picks this fight, and the
Speaker 1: fight starts going down to the Washington comes back home.
Speaker 1: Imagine this the early twenties, your first big assignment. It's
Speaker 1: a total mess. So what does he do? He writes
Speaker 1: a pamphlet. He says, I was really right. I did
Speaker 1: exactly the right thing, the only thing you could have done,
Speaker 1: and none of it was my fault. And I'm really
Speaker 1: proud of to do it well. I played well. The
Speaker 1: average person doesn't know anything about what's going on. There's
Speaker 1: no television, there's no live coverage from Fort Necessity, and
Speaker 1: so the only explanation of what happened is Washington's and
Speaker 1: copies of it get to London, and he's now a
Speaker 1: persona He's a real person. So along comes the British.
Speaker 1: Finally said okay, this is going to be real war.
Speaker 1: You got to get engaged. They send an army and
Speaker 1: Washington gets some of his first basic lessons, and this
Speaker 1: is selling people often forget. Washington learned a lot about
Speaker 1: war by being at war. He didn't learn about war
Speaker 1: by reading theoretical works, and so they need a colonial advisor.
Speaker 1: British aristocracy was totally contemptuous to the colonials, and I
Speaker 1: thought they were basically stupid and lazy and cowardly. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: they want British aristocrats. They were also contemptuous of British soldiers,
Speaker 1: and they're contemptious of Heshman mercenaries because they're British aristocrats.
Speaker 1: So Washington has assigned and he has some advice for him.
Speaker 1: He says, it is not helpful to march down the
Speaker 1: middle of the road in red outfits because the other
Speaker 1: side will cheat and they will fire from behind trees
Speaker 1: and you're going to get killed. And General Braddock explains
Speaker 1: to them, you obviously don't understand European warfare, but just relax.
Speaker 1: They actually leave. If you go to the Army War
Speaker 1: College at Carlisle, you can see the post from which
Speaker 1: they left, and they might again remember the Carlile. Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: which is next to Harrisburg, is the beginning of the frontier.
Speaker 1: So they're now marching through the Pennsylvania forest and surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: they get attacked by people who are cheating there. They're
Speaker 1: wearing outfits that blend into the forest, and the French
Speaker 1: are not wearing the normal white French uniforms, which they
Speaker 1: do when they're informal warfare, but when they're fighting in
Speaker 1: the woods, they're wearing stuff that fits the woods. The Indians,
Speaker 1: of course, have no uniforms anyway, and so the combined
Speaker 1: French and Indian force attacks. Braddock is killed almost immediately.
Speaker 1: The British force is disintegrating. I mean, they're confused, they're scared,
Speaker 1: they've lost their commander. And the one guy who's on
Speaker 1: the tallest horse is Washington, and so Washington starts to
Speaker 1: rally them, get them reorganized, get them the hell out
Speaker 1: of the way, because they're in real danger of being
Speaker 1: a massacred. The Washington in that fight has four bullet
Speaker 1: holes in his coat and has two horses shot out
Speaker 1: from He reached his brother the next day. God must
Speaker 1: have really been protecting him, because at some point one
Speaker 1: of those bulls should have hit him and it was lucky.
Speaker 1: And then he began insists on being up on these horses,
Speaker 1: which is important for his men's morale because they can
Speaker 1: see they at least have a leader, even if he's
Speaker 1: a colonial. But at the same time it sort of
Speaker 1: makes shift target. Decade later, he runs into an Indian
Speaker 1: chieftain of a tribal council, and the chieftain says, God
Speaker 1: must have some big role for you, because I personally
Speaker 1: shot at you thirteen times. He said, all of us
Speaker 1: are trying to kill you because you were so obvious,
Speaker 1: and we just couldn't itch you. That's important later because Washington,
Speaker 1: after that fight in his own mind as a man
Speaker 1: of destiny. So he goes back home, marries a very
Speaker 1: wealthy widow who brings him Mount Vernon, and I think
Speaker 1: a genuine love match. She has two children. They never
Speaker 1: have children on their own. Washington raises the children as
Speaker 1: his own, and he and Martha entertainment. And this is
Speaker 1: one of the things to remember Colonial Virginia. If you
Speaker 1: were reasonably in Washington in Land was the wealthiest columnist,
Speaker 1: not as wealthy as the Fairfaxes. But the Fairfaxes eventually
Speaker 1: leave during the Revolution, at which point he becomes the
Speaker 1: wealthiest person in America in Land, not in money, but
Speaker 1: you always entertain if you look at the Fuda Mount
Speaker 1: Vernon and you look at the register of who comes by.
Speaker 1: There are always people coming to visit. I mean, at
Speaker 1: one point later in his life, James Madison comes over
Speaker 1: and spends I think six weeks living with Washington, writing,
Speaker 1: arguing and writing about the Constitution and the just used
Speaker 1: to this. This is this is their life. Washington regularly
Speaker 1: will ride up to Alexandria, and if you want to,
Speaker 1: you can go to Gatsby's Tavern, which still exists, which
Speaker 1: was the site of Washington's birthday parties, and he would
Speaker 1: they'd all ride up together and have a great party
Speaker 1: and have a few drinks. Intended to party during the
Speaker 1: daytime so they could get home around dark. But it
Speaker 1: was this was It's all real. It was a social life.
Speaker 1: It was a nice life. And Washington's faced with the
Speaker 1: same problem as every other American, which is, you are
Speaker 1: trying to have a cash based economy with no cash
Speaker 1: and you're dealing with British merchants who are constantly cheating you,
Speaker 1: cheating you in the sense that they want to pay
Speaker 1: you less for what you sell and charge you more
Speaker 1: for what they sell. So you're always juggling us very
Speaker 1: tight financial burden and you're not particularly happy with the British,
Speaker 1: and Washington is serving in public life as a legislator,
Speaker 1: but mostly he's a farmer and a gentleman who is
Speaker 1: nice to people who come wandering through. And then the
Speaker 1: British decide that they're going to pay for the debt
Speaker 1: coming out of the Seven Years' War by raising taxes
Speaker 1: on the Americans, and their rationale is not crazy. The
Speaker 1: rationale is, look, we saved you from the French, we
Speaker 1: saved you from the Indians. Things are relatively safe. You
Speaker 1: ought to pay your fair share. Now the American attitude
Speaker 1: is very different. The American attitude is, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not our fault that you're a profigate government in London
Speaker 1: and that you waste all your money and that you're
Speaker 1: surrounded by corruption, and no, we're not going to pay anything.
Speaker 1: You know, we're happy to have you around, but frankly,
Speaker 1: since we no longer have any threat from the French,
Speaker 1: why do we need you? And so you have this
Speaker 1: weird moment where the British think the generosity is going
Speaker 1: to leave the Americans out of gratitude don't want to
Speaker 1: pay taxes, and the Americans are saying, no, the very
Speaker 1: fact that you one means we don't need you. And
Speaker 1: Washington's in the faction. That's fine. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: think I want to pay any taxes. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't like those guys anyway. They'll always trying to cheat me.
Speaker 1: He's not a fire Brown, He's not out there saying
Speaker 1: let's rebel, let's do something, but he's clearly in the
Speaker 1: group around Patrick Henry and others who want to stand
Speaker 1: up to the English. And then, of course you end
Speaker 1: up with a series of events. Again, thinking yourself as
Speaker 1: a planter sitting on the Potomac River having a nice life.
Speaker 1: You're not connected by cable TV, you're not connected by internet.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't get any text messages. You occasionally
Speaker 1: read things, and so one day you read or you
Speaker 1: hear from somebody who's riding through spending the night that
Speaker 1: there was the massacre in Boston and the British troops
Speaker 1: had shot Americans who were protesting. Well, you sort of
Speaker 1: start thinking about that, did that happen here? Could it
Speaker 1: happen at Williamsburg? Do I feel a little pissed off
Speaker 1: that the British are shooting Americans? And the alienation starts
Speaker 1: to build, and the call goes out to come to Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and let's talk about how bad this is getting. When
Speaker 1: the British decide to impose taxes that the Americans really
Speaker 1: get mad about, particularly tacks on tea, which leads to
Speaker 1: the Bostonians dressing up as Indians and having a tea
Speaker 1: party throwing all the Indian East Indian Company tea into
Speaker 1: the river. And ironically, the British thought they were being
Speaker 1: clever because they actually had organized it so that the
Speaker 1: price he would be less under the new rules, even
Speaker 1: though you paid taxes and the Americans got none. No,
Speaker 1: it's the principle, we don't care that it's cheaper. We
Speaker 1: care that part of the money goes to you, and
Speaker 1: we're not going to pay your money. And so they're
Speaker 1: cheerfully throwing all of these bales of tea, which are
Speaker 1: very valuable, into the Boston harbor, which really makes the
Speaker 1: British pretty bad. And so the British decided that they're
Speaker 1: going to close down on Boston and ultimately isolate the
Speaker 1: city of Boston to punish it, in the theory that
Speaker 1: that will then scare the rest of the Americans into
Speaker 1: being obedient. But what it really does is just makes
Speaker 1: them angry. So the call goes out, they meet and
Speaker 1: then what is called the Continental Congress, which is a
Speaker 1: huge breakthrough. I mean, these people hadn't thought of themselves
Speaker 1: as Americans. They were Virginians, they were Georgians, they were Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: They spoke very different dialects in the sense of the
Speaker 1: tone of their language, the patterns they ate differently, and
Speaker 1: they hadn't really begun to identify them they were Americans.
Speaker 1: And now they have this problem, and Washington's one of
Speaker 1: the people who's drifting towards being more and more alienated
Speaker 1: and more and more angry, and he's ultimately affected, I
Speaker 1: think in part by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin is a world
Speaker 1: class scientist recognized all over the world. He is a
Speaker 1: very successful businessman who makes enough money by forty to
Speaker 1: sell his businesses and devote himself to public life. He
Speaker 1: writes for Richard's Almanac every year and is very widely
Speaker 1: known as the first postmaster General of the colonies, and
Speaker 1: therefore has connections at all of the colonies because he
Speaker 1: handles the mail. And he is sent by the Colony
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania to London to plead with the British and
Speaker 1: to basically say, look, there's some things we need solved,
Speaker 1: and we can be nice. He spends about seven or
Speaker 1: eight years in London, and he ends up suddenly realizing
Speaker 1: they'll never accept it. They're aristocrats. He's not an aristocrat,
Speaker 1: even though he's a world famous scientist, even though he's
Speaker 1: wealthier than some of the aristocrats. There'll never be anything
Speaker 1: in British society. And it just totally infuriates And somebody
Speaker 1: once wrote that he left America as an Englishman and
Speaker 1: he returned as an American, and so his spirit made
Speaker 1: he's very widely respected. People like Washington look to him
Speaker 1: and say, you know, you've been there, you've lived there,
Speaker 1: what do you think And he's basically saying, I don't
Speaker 1: think we have any choice. These people are never going
Speaker 1: to treat us fairly now they think they were servants.
Speaker 1: And so the spirit begins to build, and the British
Speaker 1: begins sending troops to Boston because they're determined to crush
Speaker 1: the spirit of resistance and they think that if they
Speaker 1: can break Boston that that will symbolically shift the whole country. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the myths about Washington is that he's sort
Speaker 1: of self effacing He's this guy who really wasn't ambitious.
Speaker 1: But I've always saw one of them telling things. In
Speaker 1: the Commonal Congress, there is only one person wearing a
Speaker 1: military uniform. He's also the one of the two biggest
Speaker 1: people of Jefferson and the other Jefferson Stein, but tall,
Speaker 1: very tall. The Washington is big. I see this huge
Speaker 1: guy walking around in the uniform of a Virginia militia
Speaker 1: and saying to everybody, of course, I wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: go to Boston. I don't want you to think I'm
Speaker 1: a military man just because I'm standing here in my uniform.
Speaker 1: But it just seemed to me it was the appropriate
Speaker 1: thing to wear. And gradually they all look around each
Speaker 1: andy go aha, because they have a problem politically. They
Speaker 1: need a Southerner to go to Boston because they need
Speaker 1: to unify the columns. They can't appoint a Bostonian or
Speaker 1: a New Hampshire Rite to be commander of the army
Speaker 1: because they'll have no linkage to New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
Speaker 1: and Virginia is the biggest colony in wealth and population
Speaker 1: at that point, so they could turn to Washington. He says,
Speaker 1: with great reluctance, I will accept this burden, although I
Speaker 1: fear that I will be inadequate and I probably will fail.
Speaker 1: But as long as you recognize that I'm only doing
Speaker 1: this because he wanted me to, I will go to Boston.
Speaker 1: And I think it's hard for us to realize. You're
Speaker 1: this guy who's in many ways an aristocrat. He's very wealthy.
Speaker 1: You know, he rides a horse very well in the
Speaker 1: style of the wrist. If you're a farmer, you don't
Speaker 1: ride a horse the way George Washington does. He rode
Speaker 1: to the Foxes and he shows up, and you have
Speaker 1: to think about this. You have a new England Army
Speaker 1: and this weird guy shows up from Virginia, speaking in
Speaker 1: a slightly strange English and with an attitude of being
Speaker 1: sort of a little lustere and a little you know,
Speaker 1: And he's got to really think about this because he
Speaker 1: realizes he's got to find a way to get all
Speaker 1: these new wonders to follow him, or he's got a problem.
Speaker 1: And so he works at it, and he spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time with the troops. And again, I think
Speaker 1: there's an advantage that we underestimate. If you imagine this
Speaker 1: as a movie scene, you'd have this, as I said,
Speaker 1: a guy in the modern era who's the size of
Speaker 1: an NFL offensive lineman and you're walking around the camp. Well,
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious when he walks around the camp because
Speaker 1: he towers over everybody. He's also the strongest guy in
Speaker 1: the army. Well, it gives them a certain sense of
Speaker 1: immediate acceptance that he should be the leader. And he
Speaker 1: designs a very intelligent strategy and they move from the
Speaker 1: cannon in a position where the British have to flee.
Speaker 1: And so Washington, in a matter of a couple months
Speaker 1: has driven the British out of Boston, which is an
Speaker 1: enormous achievement. And at that point, you can imagine everybody's excited,
Speaker 1: everybody's positive, and there's a problem because of the British
Speaker 1: have a navy and they're not leaving. They just left Boston.
Speaker 1: They went to Canada group and they're probably going to
Speaker 1: come back to New York, which is in many ways
Speaker 1: the key town for the whole war is it's a
Speaker 1: big port. It leaks that if you can break New York,
Speaker 1: then you cut off New England from the rest of
Speaker 1: the country. So Washington takes his army and marches to
Speaker 1: New York, and they feel him pretty good about themselves.
Speaker 1: And in his first grade outing he's been very successful.
Speaker 1: And he has the dequition independance read to everybody, and
Speaker 1: they're all pumped up, and they have a real problem.
Speaker 1: It's not a very good army. They're not trained very well,
Speaker 1: they don't have very good equipment, and they're up against
Speaker 1: the best starting in the world and the British land
Speaker 1: and just knock them all over the place, capture a
Speaker 1: bunch of them, kill a bunch of them, and they're
Speaker 1: in real danger of being annihilated. And one of those
Speaker 1: miracles of Washington refers to and when he has said
Speaker 1: later in life that anybody who thinks that God wasn't
Speaker 1: watching over us, he used the word providence misunderstands how
Speaker 1: it happened. Because what happens is the Gloucester fishermen common say, look,
Speaker 1: we can we can get the army across and get
Speaker 1: you out of Brooklyn before you're annihilated if we go
Speaker 1: at night and the Royal Navy probably won't see us,
Speaker 1: and we'll get certainly a large part of you across. Well,
Speaker 1: the night they decide to do this, a huge fog
Speaker 1: grows in and the British can't see anything. And so
Speaker 1: Washington's getting these troops and he goes last. He's getting
Speaker 1: all these troops in these boats. They're rowing across to Manhattan.
Speaker 1: But they've been beaten. You know, there's no question they
Speaker 1: just they just ran head out into the British and lost.
Speaker 1: They get into Manhattan, well, they're this huge problem. One
Speaker 1: British man of war has more artillery than the entire
Speaker 1: American army has at any point in the governess. These
Speaker 1: are big ships, the equivalent of modern naval aircraft. Payers
Speaker 1: they're powerful, and if you're close to the water, they're
Speaker 1: going to just knock you about with arty. And so
Speaker 1: they're driven out of Manhattan where they losing him. And
Speaker 1: at one point General Green of Rhode Island has probably
Speaker 1: his best general, has this clever idea. We're going to
Speaker 1: name this fort Fort Washington, and the moral effect of
Speaker 1: defending Fort Washington, three thousand men will stand firm well
Speaker 1: for Washington falls because in fact they're not capable of
Speaker 1: fighting Verige. So Washington suggests agree that in the future
Speaker 1: they should probably not try gimmicks, and he flees across
Speaker 1: to White Plains and then he flees across into New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and a week by week he gets smaller, tirer, more defeated. Washington,
Speaker 1: who's a very smart guy about people in a way
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't expect, and his austerity. Washington knows that
Speaker 1: Thomas Pain has written tremendously important pamphlet on the revolution
Speaker 1: and probably the best selling pamphlet describing the revolution, and
Speaker 1: so he goes to him and he says, look, you
Speaker 1: wrote that when everything was great in the summer. Now
Speaker 1: we had a problem because all of us thought we were
Speaker 1: going to win easily, and now we're getting beat and
Speaker 1: I need a new pamphlet. And so he said, I
Speaker 1: don't need you to be a rifleman. Pain's actually in
Speaker 1: the army and he says, you've written common Sense. It's
Speaker 1: the most widely read explanation of the revolution. And he says,
Speaker 1: go to Philadelphia and write, explain to us what we're
Speaker 1: living through. And so Pain writes the crisis which begins.
Speaker 1: These are the times the trimensuls and people read it
Speaker 1: and they said, they go, oh, yeah, this is what
Speaker 1: I'm living through. And Pain basically says, look, you know,
Speaker 1: hell is going to grab onto you as long as
Speaker 1: it can, and it's not going to be easy to beat,
Speaker 1: and you've got to be and he compares basically fighting
Speaker 1: the British to trying to fight your way out of hell,
Speaker 1: and people read it and they go, look, okay, it's
Speaker 1: not going to be easy. It's not going to be
Speaker 1: this week. So Washington ends up at Christmas Day, and
Speaker 1: the week before Christmas he's dropped from thirty thousand men
Speaker 1: to five thousand. Of the five thousand twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: or sick, so he's actually got twenty five hundred defectives.
Speaker 1: Of the twenty five hundred effectives, one third do not
Speaker 1: have boots and are actually marching in burlet bags, leaving
Speaker 1: a trail of blood. So Washington is sitting here, twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred men left. Cross the river in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: Washington in Pennsylvania. Cross the river in New Jersey. Is
Speaker 1: the British army, and Washington brings all of his generalism
Speaker 1: and says, we have a really big problem. We don't
Speaker 1: win a victory. Most of our men actually expire in
Speaker 1: their enlistment sometime in January. If they don't have some
Speaker 1: reason to stay, we will have no army left. So
Speaker 1: we have to win something. So I propose, let's cross
Speaker 1: the Delaware at night during a snowstorm in the ice
Speaker 1: march eleven miles to treaden surprise the British Army, actually
Speaker 1: Hessian who were there, who were paid mercenaries, which is
Speaker 1: an honorable job back then, and then we'll have won
Speaker 1: a great victory and then people will be excited and'll
Speaker 1: be okay. Every one of his generals looks at him
Speaker 1: like he's insane, and they go, we've been losing. Now
Speaker 1: since September, we've shrunk down from thirty to twenty five.
Speaker 1: And Washington has a plan which has three units that
Speaker 1: are going to cross the river at three different places
Speaker 1: in the coordinator attack, which even a first class professional
Speaker 1: army would have had a hard time doing. And they're
Speaker 1: just staring at it. And it's really important to this
Speaker 1: point to go back and think about Washington in the ambush,
Speaker 1: because he's sitting there as a guy who's had two
Speaker 1: horses shot off under him and four bullet holes, and
Speaker 1: he's thinking, you got to take risks. You know, there
Speaker 1: are all guys who hadn't had that experience, and they're going,
Speaker 1: I don't want to take are you crazy? I don't
Speaker 1: want to take this risk, and then he has the
Speaker 1: winning argument. He says, look, this army disappears. The revolution's over.
Speaker 1: The revolution's over. We're all going to be hung, so
Speaker 1: you don't have anything to risk, so we might as
Speaker 1: well try to wound, because at least that way we
Speaker 1: have a shot. So they cross over, and interestingly he
Speaker 1: has the officers who can read, reading pains the crisis
Speaker 1: to the troops as they get in the boat. Again,
Speaker 1: this is a very subtle man he has. He's got
Speaker 1: to get the morale up. The instry line. Mausei Dungwan
Speaker 1: said all power comes out of the end of a rifle,
Speaker 1: and somebody corrected it and said, no, all power comes
Speaker 1: from the person who's willing to shoot the road. And
Speaker 1: it's exactly right. You've got to keep morale up. So
Speaker 1: he takes his twenty five hundred men and then, in
Speaker 1: a situation which can only be described as a miracle,
Speaker 1: they cross over. There's this huge snowstorm coming from the north,
Speaker 1: which means it's coming to their back, but it's coming
Speaker 1: to the face of the Hessian troops. The Hessians run
Speaker 1: into a small Virginia unit which is off on its
Speaker 1: own without any authority, which arouses them about two or
Speaker 1: three in the morning. They jump up with the stand arms.
Speaker 1: They're all getting cold and wet, and this small unit
Speaker 1: takes off. Washington runs into this unit and thinks they've
Speaker 1: ruined the chance of success. The Hessians are going to
Speaker 1: be awake, probably going to get slaughtered about what the
Speaker 1: hell with no choice. Well, just the opposite happened. The
Speaker 1: Hessians stand outside for about an hour. They get totally soaked.
Speaker 1: They realized that this was just a griller unit that
Speaker 1: was wandering through. They all go to bed. It's not
Speaker 1: that Theassians were drunk. The Hessians were in the middle
Speaker 1: of a snowstorm. Now here's the key thing to remember.
Speaker 1: In Europe, there are no real battles fought in winter.
Speaker 1: From I think seventeen sixty seven to nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: the German Army never launches a winter of place. Fredericks
Speaker 1: Cred launches the last one I think it's in seventy
Speaker 1: sixty seven, and then the Battle of Balgim forty four.
Speaker 1: Because winter is hard, I mean it's cold and it's miserable.
Speaker 1: Americans deer hunt in the winter. Americans are all in
Speaker 1: the woods, in the winter. So the Americans are gone.
Speaker 1: Oh we had a snowstone. Okay, the Hessians are gone.
Speaker 1: We got a snowstone. Let's stay in the house because
Speaker 1: no rational European army would be out in the snowstop
Speaker 1: so they're safe. Well, they wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and Trenton back then is a very small town and
Speaker 1: has just two streets, and so if you put cannon
Speaker 1: at the end of the two streets, you control the town.
Speaker 1: And the Hashians are all in these little houses and
Speaker 1: they can't get out of them, and they finally get
Speaker 1: a semi organized Washington captures eight hundred first class professional
Speaker 1: soldiers for the loss of one American, and then does
Speaker 1: a very intelligent thing. They run like him because the
Speaker 1: British army's coming, and they get across the river before
Speaker 1: the British can get there. Now victory really matters. They
Speaker 1: go from twenty five hundred effectives within two weeks to
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand because people are this is cool, we're winning.
Speaker 1: Same the fact happens a football, you know, people like
Speaker 1: to hear the game where they win. So they show
Speaker 1: up and Washington now has enough troops to go back
Speaker 1: across the river and one of those important examples of
Speaker 1: Washington's system. They get to Trenton this time Cornwallis and
Speaker 1: the British are ready. They are charging down the road
Speaker 1: from Princeton. Washington calls a council of War. And in
Speaker 1: the Council of War there are two farmers. And I
Speaker 1: always said, I'm teaching military courses. I always say the officers,
Speaker 1: why do you think there are two farmers? Because they
Speaker 1: are the only two people who knew the territory. So
Speaker 1: the British would never have done this because as an aristocrat,
Speaker 1: you don't listen to farmers. They haven't had military training.
Speaker 1: They only have one great advantage. They actually know the neighborhood. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that there is a sunken road on
Speaker 1: the south side of Trenton. He goes from Trenton to
Speaker 1: Princeton that you cannot see if you're on the northern
Speaker 1: road from Princeton to trent So Washington takes his entire
Speaker 1: army runs down the road and the British are running
Speaker 1: towards Trenton. He's running towards Princeton. And my favorite war
Speaker 1: Washington paigning is Washington and Princeton with the cannon sitting
Speaker 1: there and the British captured British flags behind it, and Washington,
Speaker 1: at this point is about forty four years old, is
Speaker 1: standing jauntily leaning on a British cannon, looking like the
Speaker 1: Fox center who's called the Fox. I mean it's the
Speaker 1: best picture because we tend to see Washington backwards. We
Speaker 1: see the guy who's president late in his life. This
Speaker 1: is still a young, energetic, aggressive guy. So the revolutionists survived,
Speaker 1: and Washington's now in a position to continue to develop
Speaker 1: the army. But it's important remember this is not everybody
Speaker 1: worships Washington. I mean, if you're not in the army
Speaker 1: with Washington, you're thinking, this guy's not had a very
Speaker 1: good run here. I mean, okay, did okay in Boston,
Speaker 1: got cleaned out in New York, cleaned out in New Jersey?
Speaker 1: I mean, can we do better? Of course, during this period,
Speaker 1: when the Americans win at Saratoga with the British army collapses,
Speaker 1: you suddenly have an interest in somebody other than Washington.
Speaker 1: So this' about a third of the continent of Congress
Speaker 1: would like to fare Washington and is actively plotting. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons when Washington ends up the next
Speaker 1: year going into Valley Forge, where he'd been promised to
Speaker 1: be food, there'd be equipment to build houses, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and they had nothing. People in Congress are deliberately setting
Speaker 1: him up to fail because they want to get rid
Speaker 1: of it. And again you get a sense of Washington
Speaker 1: settled it. Washington, who had no children himself, had basically
Speaker 1: opted the Marquis de Lafayette, who's in his early twenties,
Speaker 1: as kind of like a steps. He loved Lafayette, Lafayette
Speaker 1: loved him, and so Lafayette happens to write a letter
Speaker 1: to the Congress. It says, you know, French King thinks
Speaker 1: so highly of General Washington that if something were to
Speaker 1: happen to him and he was no longer in command,
Speaker 1: I really fear that all French money, French ammunition, French uniforms,
Speaker 1: French assistants would disappear. And I, certainly, because of my
Speaker 1: deep belief in the Revolution, wouldn't want that to happen. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it. Washington has reasserted that he's in charge. He
Speaker 1: also understands that he still doesn't have a very good army.
Speaker 1: And a guy shows up named Astoivan, who is a
Speaker 1: character in his own writer, I mean almost somebody could
Speaker 1: do an entire novel about He's a German officer, claims
Speaker 1: more credit than he really deserves, claims higher rank than
Speaker 1: he really deserves, shows up and says, you know, I
Speaker 1: can train your army. And this is one of those miracles,
Speaker 1: A little bit like Washington listening to Farmers. Is when
Speaker 1: Stryman looks around for a little while and realizes, if
Speaker 1: I try to apply European systems, they will all rebuild
Speaker 1: because they're Americans. So I can't just go and enforce
Speaker 1: the being in Europe, I can force obedience because the
Speaker 1: peasants expect me to force able. In the US, they all,
Speaker 1: you know, does just throw me out. And so he
Speaker 1: figures out, you have to tell Americans why you're doing it.
Speaker 1: But if you'll tell them why you're doing it, they
Speaker 1: actually learn faster than the Europeans. And so he begins
Speaker 1: to train this army. And when they're in Valley Forge,
Speaker 1: Washington again is very careful about a number of things.
Speaker 1: They have a huge bakehouse which makes all the bread
Speaker 1: for the army, and they turn it into a theater,
Speaker 1: and so they bake bread good morning in the evening
Speaker 1: they have plays. Washington's favorite play is Cato, which is
Speaker 1: a remarkable study. In eighteenth century Britain, you could not
Speaker 1: directly attack the king, because that'll be treason. So they
Speaker 1: tended to write about the Romans, because you could write
Speaker 1: about tyranny and corruption in Rome, and that's not really
Speaker 1: attacking the king, although everybody who sees the play knows
Speaker 1: you're talking about the king. So Cato is about the
Speaker 1: Roman senator who, at the time of Caesar, refuses to
Speaker 1: accept Caesar as the head of the government, and Caesar
Speaker 1: ultimately chases him across the Mediterranean and ends up face
Speaker 1: to face and says, look, I want you to live.
Speaker 1: You're my friend, I really believe in you. All you
Speaker 1: have to do is swear loyalty and you'll be rich
Speaker 1: and happy to us joy and Cato basically says, you know,
Speaker 1: my son's already been killed. Freedom is worth everything, and
Speaker 1: would rather die as a free person than live swearing loyally.
Speaker 1: View This is Warshington's favorite play. He cried every time
Speaker 1: he saw it, and it was the center in the
Speaker 1: way of Washington's own belief that he is in rebellion
Speaker 1: because he is a Freeman and he is not going
Speaker 1: to give him, and so they would. I think they
Speaker 1: showed it three times that winter, and then they showed
Speaker 1: other things. He was very concerned about morale, I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you keep morale up? And they began to
Speaker 1: build a real army. They collide with the British shortly
Speaker 1: after Valley Forge and they beat him head to head,
Speaker 1: and the British suddenly realized that they have a real problem.
Speaker 1: They can no longer count on the Americans breaking them.
Speaker 1: Washington then chases them across New Jersey. At the British
Speaker 1: ended up going back into New York City, where the
Speaker 1: Royal Navy can sustain them. Now by this stage you've
Speaker 1: also got a French army showing up, have the French
Speaker 1: Navy occasionally showing up, your French money showing up, which
Speaker 1: is really important. But Washington can't win. He cannot break
Speaker 1: into New York. You can't drive the British out of
Speaker 1: New York. And what the British have done is they've
Speaker 1: got Washington sucked into basically laying siege to New York,
Speaker 1: while the British army is moving troops into South Carolina
Speaker 1: and Georgia and trying to reconquer the colonies from the
Speaker 1: South coming north, which turns out also to fail because Washington,
Speaker 1: since Green, was his best general, and they organized guerrilla
Speaker 1: warfare and altimately organized regular warfare and gradually start chewing
Speaker 1: up the British in the South. But the Southern War
Speaker 1: is a really miserable, nasty war, and it was good
Speaker 1: that Washington couldn't go there because he would not have
Speaker 1: liked it. It isn't who he wanted. He believed deeply
Speaker 1: you had to have a regular army that had discipline,
Speaker 1: because it was the base civilization. And he did not
Speaker 1: want to be involved in World War. He knew how
Speaker 1: to me. He had thought he'd fought the Indians. He
Speaker 1: understood a lot about how to fight at Glewar. He
Speaker 1: thought in the end it would be so bitter and
Speaker 1: so bloody that it would shatter the society. And so
Speaker 1: he really worked hard at keeping on together. And one
Speaker 1: of the great gambles, if you, if you ever get
Speaker 1: a chance, is look at him out Washington sitting in
Speaker 1: New York. The French army is actually sitting in Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, cornwallis who has a large
Speaker 1: British army finds himself cooped up at York Town in Virginia.
Speaker 1: I remember this is people are marching with no trains,
Speaker 1: no airplanes, no cars, and Washington has to make a decision.
Speaker 1: If I leave New York there's people are really getting
Speaker 1: terrible matter for seven years, I leave New York. I
Speaker 1: marched down through Philadelphia and get to York Town. Will
Speaker 1: Cornwell still be there? Will the French navies show up?
Speaker 1: And will the French army walk with me? Go with me?
Speaker 1: And can I raise the money to pay the troops?
Speaker 1: And if it works, I might be able to win
Speaker 1: the battle that will lead the victory in the war.
Speaker 1: If it fails, we may well collapse because we've been
Speaker 1: at this so long and we're so tired. This is
Speaker 1: one of the great strategic game. I'll takes some normal
Speaker 1: if you imagine the courage to sit there and think
Speaker 1: this through and go. You know what I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna move. I'm going to decoy the British
Speaker 1: with just in our forces left behind that they think
Speaker 1: I'm still in New York and We're going to march
Speaker 1: as fast as we can. And when I get to Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: I'm going to see governor, want some big him to
Speaker 1: bring together all the rich people in the city to
Speaker 1: steve Is enough money to pay the army to keep moving.
Speaker 1: And hopefully by the time I get to Yorktown, if
Speaker 1: you're marching, this is a long march, hopefully by then
Speaker 1: the French navy will have shown up so we can
Speaker 1: cut Cornwallis off. So he can't the British navy can't
Speaker 1: take him off Yorktown. Well, it is said that when
Speaker 1: Washington crossed the last ridge and could see Yorktown and
Speaker 1: beyond Yorktown could see the French fleet, that he physically
Speaker 1: jumped off his horse and did a jig. The only
Speaker 1: people said it's the only time in the entire war
Speaker 1: that he saw him just lose control. He was so
Speaker 1: excited because he had him, so the French and the British,
Speaker 1: I mean the French of the Americans lay siege. Cornwallis
Speaker 1: is a good professional British officer and later on goes
Speaker 1: on to become a very successful governor General of India.
Speaker 1: Recognizes after a couple of days that you know, he
Speaker 1: can't win, so he sends the word that he's prepared
Speaker 1: to surrender to the French, and the French send the
Speaker 1: way back now to Washington, and then Cornwella says, I
Speaker 1: am not swinning to Washington. I'm sending a junior officer,
Speaker 1: at which point Washington says, fine, I'm sending a junior officer.
Speaker 1: So General Lincoln has I think a brigadier general at
Speaker 1: the time, accept the surrender of the British and supposedly
Speaker 1: the band plays the world turned up. Said that now
Speaker 1: Washington at that point does the monster like that which
Speaker 1: people really undervalue. They go back north because the war's
Speaker 1: not over. I mean, the fighting's over now. The diplomats
Speaker 1: are negotiating. You've got to work out all the time,
Speaker 1: so you have to keep an army in being, and
Speaker 1: his officers get really angry because you're not getting paid.
Speaker 1: The Congress in that period was setting a standard to
Speaker 1: the current Congress's match. It was often irresponsible, often tailed
Speaker 1: to do what it should do, often had to really
Speaker 1: done policies, and in this period they weren't paying the army.
Speaker 1: So a group of the officers get together and decide
Speaker 1: that Washington should become a dictator. And there was a
Speaker 1: precedent for this because one hundred years earlier, in the
Speaker 1: English Civil War, Cromwell had emerged and established a dictation,
Speaker 1: And in fact, a lot of people had worried about
Speaker 1: Washington it need to be too powerful and too popular,
Speaker 1: precisely because he would become Cromwell. There's a great scene
Speaker 1: where the officers have met in the schoolroom, and Washington
Speaker 1: was in and as he recounted, he took out his
Speaker 1: glasses in order to remind him that he'd grown old
Speaker 1: in the service of his country. And he pulls out
Speaker 1: this letter, and he fees the letter, the essence of
Speaker 1: which is, do you really think that we rebelled against
Speaker 1: George the Third to create George the first? This would
Speaker 1: destroy everything that we fought for for eight years. The
Speaker 1: officers all go, okay, yeah, don't be dictator. I guess
Speaker 1: we'll continue. He then does something that is remarkable, and
Speaker 1: George the third says, if Washington gives up power, it'll
Speaker 1: be the greatest man of the century. So Washington on
Speaker 1: the way home, having been I always tell people when
Speaker 1: they get frustrated, they get tired of trying to do something.
Speaker 1: Washington spends eight years in the field. He's in Mount
Speaker 1: Vernon for two weeks in the entire war, and he
Speaker 1: loves mont. So now he's on the way home. So
Speaker 1: he goes to Annapolis with the Condinal Congress's meeting, and
Speaker 1: you can actually go to the State House. They still
Speaker 1: have the room and they have it set up with statues.
Speaker 1: The Congress is sitting, Washington is standing in the Congress
Speaker 1: is sitting to show that he is obedient to them,
Speaker 1: but that they are his superior to collective, and he
Speaker 1: gives them his sword. He literally says, I've now done
Speaker 1: my job. I'm returning to you the sword that I
Speaker 1: was given back in Philadelphia. And he then goes home.
Speaker 1: He's at home, he's happy, he's being a farmer. Martha's happy.
Speaker 1: And things don't work pretty well. And it turns out
Speaker 1: people forget this. Virtually every state, as they've now become
Speaker 1: ceased to be colomists, has to rewrite his constitution. They
Speaker 1: all fail. And so yet people getting pretty good practice
Speaker 1: of writing constitutions, and people got involved in a variety
Speaker 1: of fairly dumb ideas, repudiating the debt, inflating the currency,
Speaker 1: and people begin to write Washington and say, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to do something to fix this,
Speaker 1: and this is not working, and it's creating a vacuum
Speaker 1: where the British and the French and the Spanish can
Speaker 1: come in and exploit it. Washington writes several of his
Speaker 1: friend and says, no, people aren't tired enough yet. They've
Speaker 1: got to finish celebrate and we've got to finish getting
Speaker 1: over this. And I'm not going to go now because
Speaker 1: if I go now, it'll be too soon. And so
Speaker 1: he's very patient. Now again, everybody in their brother is
Speaker 1: coming to Mount Vernon to spend the night, to have dinner,
Speaker 1: to chat with him. He's receiving letters from all over
Speaker 1: the country. Finally a group gets together on Annapolis and
Speaker 1: they get him to come to the meeting. And I say,
Speaker 1: we've got to fix the articles of Confederation because they're
Speaker 1: not working. We need to have a meeting to fix
Speaker 1: the current system. So he's the center of this. If
Speaker 1: he's willing to sign the letter, people will show up.
Speaker 1: If he doesn't sign the letter, it would never happen.
Speaker 1: So he agrees he's the lead signer. It basically says,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to Philadelphi and try to fix this.
Speaker 1: Why don't you come run? So every state sends a
Speaker 1: delegation to Philadelphia in seventeen eighty seven, and again it's
Speaker 1: very different than people think. First of all, when they
Speaker 1: meet for fifty five days, it's in secret. There's no
Speaker 1: press corps, there's no press secretary, don't tell anybody anything. Second,
Speaker 1: at several points it almost breaks down. At one point,
Speaker 1: the oldest man there, Benjamin Franklin, says we need to stop,
Speaker 1: have a day of fast and prayer and get our
Speaker 1: head on straight, because right now we're just strown up.
Speaker 1: They do that, They get a sermon, they pray, they fast.
Speaker 1: There together, they talk, and people who study carefully make
Speaker 1: the point that I think is often very misunderstood about Washington.
Speaker 1: Washington is presiding inevitably, and so he's sitting up here
Speaker 1: and you actually go and look at the room, and
Speaker 1: occurs in in Philadelphia. But at lunch, at breakfast, at dinner,
Speaker 1: he's constantly political. What if we did this, what if
Speaker 1: we fixed that, what if we pulled this together. Maybe
Speaker 1: if you work with so and so, you can work
Speaker 1: something out. So his underlying influence is enormous, but it's
Speaker 1: all private. It's not public speeches, it's not you know,
Speaker 1: speaking from the chair. He represents the whole convention, and
Speaker 1: they do something which is really quite remarkable. They're sent
Speaker 1: there to fix the articles of Confederation, and by the
Speaker 1: time they all get there, they go, this is stupid.
Speaker 1: They are not going to work. Let's just write a constitution.
Speaker 1: So what you technically have a coup datam I mean
Speaker 1: you a group of people who decide they're going to
Speaker 1: fix the whole thing. They have no authority to do it.
Speaker 1: They just assert it. They then publish it. And again
Speaker 1: Washington when this thing started, and Madison in particular, was
Speaker 1: all over Washington, You've got to go do this, you
Speaker 1: got to go do this. The reason Madison ends up
Speaker 1: living in Mount Vernon for while was Washington, fine, you
Speaker 1: come here, you do the reading, you put the other writing,
Speaker 1: you do all the work, and when you get that done,
Speaker 1: I'll think, good going. But I'm not gonna do all
Speaker 1: that junk. You're the intellectual. I'm not going to run
Speaker 1: my farm. So Washington's happily entertaining at night and walk
Speaker 1: going around running his farm. Poor Madison's trapped, who loves it,
Speaker 1: is trapped in a room with Mount Vernon thinking through
Speaker 1: the whole thing. They then do something that's quite remarkable.
Speaker 1: They go to the thirteen states and they say, basically,
Speaker 1: you have to vote. We will not be legitimate unless
Speaker 1: you vote. And the greatest political brochure in history is
Speaker 1: the Federalist Papers, because that's what it is. It's a campaign.
Speaker 1: Doctor and Jay and Hamilton and Madison write it. And
Speaker 1: you get Washington sending a letter out to the whole
Speaker 1: country saying basically, this is what we've done. We need
Speaker 1: you to vote yes, this is important. Not an overwhelming margin.
Speaker 1: The country says yes, and they adopt a constitution, on
Speaker 1: which point, of course, they turn a meeting and go, gosh,
Speaker 1: we're going to need a first president now, Washington saying,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I'm a noun vernon. I've done you know,
Speaker 1: I've done my share. No, no, no, no, you got
Speaker 1: to come up. So he agrees. He and Martha go
Speaker 1: to New York by the end of the first term,
Speaker 1: and he's very conscious he is setting the precedents which
Speaker 1: we still live by, and he knows that and he
Speaker 1: operates that way. He convinces Jefferson and Hamilton to serve
Speaker 1: in the cabinet. They hate each other. They each subsidize
Speaker 1: the newspaper to attack the other. And he doesn't care.
Speaker 1: He says, you guys are invaluable. You got to stay here,
Speaker 1: and if I got to be here, you got to
Speaker 1: be here. Late in the first term, New York newspapers
Speaker 1: are attacking Martha for holding high tea, which they regard
Speaker 1: as the first step towards a monarchy. Washington is so
Speaker 1: angry that he says, I'm going home. I've served a term.
Speaker 1: It's over. I am not going to subject my wife
Speaker 1: Martha to this kind of vicious behavior. The threat of
Speaker 1: Washington leaving is so central to the survival of the
Speaker 1: United States as a concept that Jefferson and Hamilton, who
Speaker 1: have become bitter opponents, put aside their hostility, get together
Speaker 1: jointly go to see him, and they say, you can't
Speaker 1: go home. The country's not stable enough without your leadership,
Speaker 1: without your prestige, the country won't last. You have to
Speaker 1: stay for one more term. He very grudgingly agrees. He
Speaker 1: really is so angry about the news media treatment of
Speaker 1: his wife, but they convince him that for the country
Speaker 1: he has to stay, and as a patriot in the end,
Speaker 1: he's going to do what the country needs. And it's
Speaker 1: a very important, very difficult period Britain and France are
Speaker 1: engaged in a deep war which will last until eighteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: He's trying to make sure the United States doesn't get
Speaker 1: drawn in on either side, because he understands they will
Speaker 1: just tear the country apart. So he's being very careful
Speaker 1: about not getting into European politics and not getting into conflict.
Speaker 1: At the same time, on our western frontier, particularly in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: farmers have gotten really angry about a tax break which
Speaker 1: was designed to help big distillers in the East and
Speaker 1: actually hurts the small farmers in the West who are
Speaker 1: producing corn whiskey in small batches, and so they're refusing
Speaker 1: to pay their taxes, and there's what became known as
Speaker 1: the Whiskey Rebellion. And it takes the prestige of Washington
Speaker 1: to insist that the law be enforced, and he literally
Speaker 1: organizes an army which they're about to send into western
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania in order to force people to pay their taxes.
Speaker 1: Confronted by Washington's prestige and by Washington's seriousness and by
Speaker 1: the size of the army he's raising, the farmers ultimately caved.
Speaker 1: The laws are changed a little bit so that they
Speaker 1: have a face saving way out. The Whiskey rebellion disappears.
Speaker 1: But that's the kind of thing going on that indicates
Speaker 1: how shaky this new country is, and how little people
Speaker 1: understand the concept of a central government and that it
Speaker 1: has power which can reach all the way to the
Speaker 1: boundaries of the country. Without Washington's prestige, that might not
Speaker 1: have been survivable. He does stay, and then he really
Speaker 1: has done. And one of the greatest things he does
Speaker 1: is he goes home. And that's really important because it
Speaker 1: sends a signal that power is loan to you, you
Speaker 1: don't own it, and that you have a duty to
Speaker 1: limit yourself, to be disciplined. And with the exception of
Speaker 1: President Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War Two, no president
Speaker 1: has violated the Washington principle of a maximum of two terms.
Speaker 1: And in fact, after Roosevelt, we passed a constitutional amendment
Speaker 1: to block anybody from serving more than two terms. So
Speaker 1: Washington set the principle that he served the people, they
Speaker 1: didn't serve him, that power was deliberately limited. He goes home, finally,
Speaker 1: to Mount Vernon, a place he loves. He relaxes, He
Speaker 1: goes back to being a gentleman, farmer. He's just drowning
Speaker 1: in visitors because everybody wants to drop by and see
Speaker 1: the great man. He's out riding on a wet, cold,
Speaker 1: rainy day. He comes down with a fever. In that generation,
Speaker 1: the doctors thought they would help you by bleeding you.
Speaker 1: They put leeches on him, probably hurting him by some
Speaker 1: of his blood, although there are some modern studies that
Speaker 1: indicate the leitch has actually had for some kind of diseases.
Speaker 1: They were actually very helpful because they had certain things
Speaker 1: that they actually put in your body. But in the
Speaker 1: case of Washington, they probably further weakened him. His throat
Speaker 1: seized up, and he finally died. Marca was left alone.
Speaker 1: She promptly did something which every historian ever since has regretted.
Speaker 1: She burned all of their personal letters because she felt
Speaker 1: it was private. She didn't want people to see what
Speaker 1: Washington had written to her, or she'd written to Washington,
Speaker 1: and so she literally shortly after his death, eliminates all
Speaker 1: of the personal records, which had grown up over a
Speaker 1: long lifetime and would have been fascinating. The country warns him,
Speaker 1: the country realizes that he heally had been the father
Speaker 1: of the country, that he really was first in their hearts,
Speaker 1: and that he was the symbol of what a free
Speaker 1: society was supposed to be, which is why our national
Speaker 1: capital is named for him, and why the Washington Monument
Speaker 1: stands there as a memorial to a man who had
Speaker 1: literally created the modern system of freedom under the rule
Speaker 1: of law that we've come to take for granted. So
Speaker 1: when you look around the world and you see countries failing,
Speaker 1: you see people who are in desperate trouble, you see
Speaker 1: places where the rule of law doesn't exist, you look
Speaker 1: at kleptocracy, corruption, dictatorship, it's really important to remember that
Speaker 1: the United States could have been that kind of country.
Speaker 1: It still cos them to be that kind of country,
Speaker 1: but that people can make an enormal difference. The founding
Speaker 1: fathers collectively and by their commitment to the rule of law,
Speaker 1: to the Constitution, made that difference. And the person who
Speaker 1: was indispensable, who really surmounted all of the others, they
Speaker 1: all looked up to him, they all followed his judgment.
Speaker 1: Who was President Washington, first as a general, then as president,
Speaker 1: but above all as a human being. Washington personified the
Speaker 1: kind of dignified patriotism that was at the heart of
Speaker 1: the rule of law. Each of us can learn from Washington.
Speaker 1: Each of us can learn about freedom, about discipline, about persistence.
Speaker 1: Each of us can come to understand why he loved
Speaker 1: America so much and why he loved freedom so much.
Speaker 1: And then we can teach others that anybody anywhere on
Speaker 1: the planet can learn to be free, can learn to
Speaker 1: live under the rule of law, can learn to pursue happiness.
Speaker 1: And Washington, in that sense, is a person for all
Speaker 1: of humanity, not just America, and a person for all time,
Speaker 1: not just the eighteenth century. I want to thank my
Speaker 1: longtime writing partner and fellow George Washington historian Bill Fortune.
Speaker 1: I also want to thank the Fred W. Smith National
Speaker 1: Library for the study of George Washington at Mount Vernon,
Speaker 1: and frankly, the person who did more than anybody else
Speaker 1: to create that library, Gay Gaines. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to founding Father's Week on Newtsworld. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about George Washington on our show page at newtsworld dot com.
Speaker 1: Newtsworld is produced by Gingwish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Guernsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
Speaker 1: The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
Speaker 1: Special thanks the team at Gingwish three sixty. If you've
Speaker 1: been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast
Speaker 1: and both rate us with five stars and give us
Speaker 1: a review so others come learn what it's all about.
Speaker 1: Right now, listeners, A New World consigner for my three
Speaker 1: free weekly columns at Ginrish three sixty dot com slash newsletter.
Speaker 1: I'm new Gingrich. This is news World.